The final shot of "The Girl" made me laugh. Not a laugh as in it was comedic, but one of those snooty movie buff laughs where my chest puffed and I rolled my eyes in derision. Yes, I can be a cliché movie buff at times, and the final declaration of the film that "Marnie" was Hitchcock's last masterpiece sent me in to a fit of smug pretentious laughter. "Marnie" is one of the Hitchcock's finest films, but his last masterpiece? I fart in your general direction, sir. More cerebral than Sacha Gervasi's "Hitchcock," HBO Films presentation of "The Girl," is a more disturbing and perverse look at Alfred Hitchcock, a man who relished in fetishizing and idealizing the blondes he cast for his films, and did whatever he could to mold them in to the woman of his dreams. With Tippi Hedren, Hitchcock finds a model who wants to become a humongous movie star, and is more than willing to cast her in the lead role in "The Birds." When she declares that she'll submit herself to Hitchcock and is putty in his hands, Hitchcock is more than willing to see how far she's willing to submit to his beckon calls, and launches a campaign of romantic interludes that never quite register with Hedren.

Played by Toby Jones with as much skill as possible, Hitchcock is presented as a sexually perverse and incredibly insatiable man who sought to dominate Hedren. When she rebuffed his advances, he sought to transform her in to his own submissive subject through the shoot of "The Birds." What we see is basically a dominatrix and his subject, while Hedren did whatever she could to deny him the pleasure of seeing her bow to his needs and advances. "The Girl" is the chronicle of the infamous shoot on "The Birds" and seeps in to the mind of Hitchcock who uses the film as a means of tearing Hedren down psychologically and physically. Hedren just will not walk off set no matter how much he inflicts pain on to her, and we see Hitchcock challenged in a life filled with starry eyed blonde dolls he collected for his gallery.

Imelda Staunton is woefully underused, but the role she plays as Alma Hitchcock is implied as somewhat of a ring master who fetched Hitchcock's next love interest and stood back as he formed and demeaned them however he pleased. The performances for the most part, are competent but still can never quite obtain the essence of the individuals. Sienna Miller is an attractive woman but never quite channels Tippi Hedren or her unique sexual appeal, while Toby Jones perfects Hitchcock's Enlgish drawl and odd demeanor, but looks like a stage actor in an awkward fat suit and bad hair dye. There's also no attempt to duplicate Hithcock's long nose or rotund chin, which distracts from the performance by Jones very much. "The Girl" doesn't quite manage to portray Hitchcock as masterfully as past biography films, but it's at least a more internal look at Hitchcock's obsession with the blonde.